ECONOMICS -
What does economics have to do with living green? Actually, quite a lot. Economics is a science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. As the American Economic Society simply states, “Economics is the study of how people choose to use resources.” So you see, economics deals with people (8+ billion of us on Earth) and how we use our resources. Most students of basic economics are taught, “The basic premise is that economic man always wants to consume goods and services, without limit.” [E-1] There's the rub.
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We've been conditioned to believe that economic growth is crucial and unques-tionable. Economists, politicians, the media, students, and the public at large believe economic growth is good. However, economic growth is just an increase in the production and consumption of goods and services in the aggregate. The underlying assumption has been that resources for production and consumption are unlimited and without bounds, or that scarcity of a resource will force its price out of reach and protect the resource from depletion. The reality is that Earth’s resources are quite finite and economic growth cannot continue forever, perhaps not even in the near term. A non-renewable and scarce resource can become extinct, as real world protections are not perfect. Witness species extinctions in nature. When it's gone it's gone! In fact, some economists feel that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as it is measured today must essentially stop growing, as Earth may not have sufficient resources to meet the current
consumption trend which outsteps population growth. When global human population was much lower, and per capita consumption lower as well, the Earth's resources could support a growth economy, simultaneously allowing over-consumption for a modest human population. Not so today!
In summary, economics can tell us something about how sound, or not, our lives are as a result of a rapidly growing global population advantaged by technological developments since the industrial revolution, and approaching certain limits on consumption of Earth's finite resources.
Our concept of economics must change – we must rethink economic growth, in light of finite resources and burgeoning worldwide population growth. Resource depletion under current economic growth goals may be disastrous to humankind much sooner than we think.
There are many theorists that have realized that prolonged economic growth is dangerous and have advanced theories that rethink economics as in a "steady state" economy. Essentially, that is a sustainable economy – one in which goods and services remain key; yet, social and ecological values dominate over profit and growth. Translation: economic sustainability enables a better life rather than growth for growth’s sake with a misguided belief that more is better.
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Is More Better? Hope Jahren's book, The Story of More. may be helpful here, as she effectively answers the question: how can we learn to live on a finite planet? She writes clearly from a scientific background, illuminating who and where we are as humans, where even being poor on planet Earth doesn't carry the death sentence it once did. In the last 25 years, access to clean water has increased by 30%. Yet, we share the earth with eight hundred million undernourished humans. Think of that as equivilant to all the world's 18th century total population! And since the 1970's, salmon production has globally increased by 20,000%. Jahren details similar examples of more, shining light on our role in addressing human foibles that keep us from writing the Story of Less, that is, living better with less. She tackles the question: what must 8 billion people now do that the 3.6 billion could not, when she was born in 1969? She states it simply like a mantra: "Use Less and Share More.”
Jaren describes a world divided between roughly 10% who consume and waste more and the 90% who live on much less. "At present, more than two billion people on Planet Earth have no access to any system that would remove and sanitize the human excrement produced where they live. Similarly, about one billion people live without access to drinking water that has been fully purified of sewage"[E-2]
BRANKO MILANOVIC, in his book THE HAVES and the HAVE-NOTS: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality, illustrates the difficulties that even economists have in framing economic concepts in such a way as to make improvements to the inequalies in human societies, Milanovic introduces this dichotomy in Chapter 1, Unequal People:
Inequality and economic justice.
Income inequality is also an important topic because it straddles two areas that are often at the center of people's interests but not always or easily reconciled: economic efficiency and economic justice. Economic efficiency deals with the maximization of total output or rate of economic progress of a society. Economic justice deals with the acceptance and sustainability of a given social arrangement. Economic inequality plays an obvious role there, too. Inequality based on one's inheritance, race, or gender may be regarded as unjust even when not detrimental to economic development. that is above its purely instrumental value. If most people. or an influential minority, regard a given social order as unjust, sustainability of that type of arrangement will be questioned.
When assessing the desirability of different social arrangements, economists tend to use the "social welfare function" a construct that in principle includes the welfare (utility) of all members of a community. The objective is to compare the welfare of all members in one social arrangement with the welfare of all members in another and find the better one. This is called "welfarism" [E-3]
In a world where widespread inequalities --between individuals within a community, between nations, or globally-- cause insurmountable hardship and strife, a harmonious economic approach to the climate crisis may be hard to attain in time to avert an ecological catastrophe.
"Two-and-a-quarter centuries after [Adam] Smith wrote, global capitalist development has produced the most obscenely unequal societies in history, with half the world living on less than two dollars a day, billions of people living in desperate poverty,…” [E-6]
The Duplicity of Economic Growth
As mentioned, economic theorists have taken aim at the practice of economic growth which is creating havoc on a planet with limited resources and a burgeoning human population with an obsessive and voratious appetite.
Richard Smith addresses mainstream approaches to counteracting this crisis, namely "degrowth" and "green capitalism". He writes, "... the theorists and proponents of 'no growth' and 'de-growth' -- like Herman Daly or Tim Jackson -- are correct in arguing infinite economic growth is not possible on a finite planet, but they're wrong to imagine that capitalism can be refashioned as a kind of "steady state" economy, let alone actually 'degrow' without precipitating economic collapse. ... I show that the theorists and proponents of 'green capitalism' such as Paul Hawken, Lester Brown, and Francis Cairncross are wrong to think that tech miracles, 'dematerialisation', new efficiencies, recycling and the like, will permit us to grow the global economy -- more or less forever -- without consuming or polluting ourselves to death."[E-4]
Smith's book deals with what he portrays as the prime threat to human life on Earth: the tendency of global capitalist economic development to develop us to death, to drive us off the cliff to ecological collapse. Smith presents an analysis of the ecological implications of capitalist economics as revealed in the work of its founding theorist Adam Smith. Richard Smith argues that, under capitalism, the pressure of competition; the imperative need to innovate and develop the forces of production to beat the competition; the need to constantly grow production and expand the market; ever-increasing resource consumption; all to reward investors; together, pushed a mental dictate that has driven economic development, and now overdevelopment. Innate to capitalism, Richard Smith claims, "... profit-maximization is an iron rule of capitalism, a rule that trumps all else, and this sets the limits to ecological reform -- and not the other way around, as green capitalism theorists supposed."[E-6]
No matter which economic transition is best suited to tackling the intertwined crisises of population growth, polution, climate change and ecological disaster, including the threat to humanity itself, immanent action is required to save humanity from itself within short decades -- now!
It will take a major attitudinal change in all of us to suppress the desire for more, needed or not, in order to wipeout endless over-consumption that appears will consume us in decades. Business as usual is eating our planet up!
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COVID-19 has enabled humanity to come together at large to see the benefit of measures such as wearing masks, social distancing and getting vaccinated. However, rebellion has reared its ugly head as nearly two years of restrictions have become untenable to some, no matter the long term benefit. COVID-19 could kill vulnerable friends and family within days; whereas, the death and pain under Climate Change could be much more severe -- yet the worst damage would largely take place decades from now rather than in days. Postponing action may mean worsening damage the longer we postpone. A bigger threat portends, but as it's not seen as eminent, this becomes our excuse for inaction -- our greed and desire for more stuff sustains business as usual.
Yet, as in the COVID-19 fight, to avert the worst of climate change, we need to find economic measures that will save humanity without large scale rebellion detrimental to all.
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We have made slow progress in tackling climate change and Mark Carney talks to this in his book "Value(s)". For example, some countries have been able to decouple economic growth from rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This decoupling reflects structural changes like increased reliance on non-carbon-intensive sectors (like the service sector), as well as greener policy choices and technologies.
"The world has collectively decoupled the growth of emissions from the growth of GDP since the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. However, as noted above, emissions are still growing, even when whole economies were shut down for pandemics. As a consequence, the carbon budget, to limit temperature rises to below catastrophic levels, is rapidly becoming exhausted.'
'In some measures, based on science, the scale of energy revolution required is staggering.'
'If we had started in 2000, we could have hit the 1.5°C objective by halving emissions every 30 years. Now, we must halve emissions every ten years.'
'To meet the 1.5°C target, more than 80% of the current fosil fuel reserves (including three-quarters of coal, half of gas, one-third of oil) would need to stay in the ground, stranding these assets. The equivalent for less than 2°C is about 60% of the fossil fuel assets staying in the ground (where they would no longer be assets)'
'The risks from climate change manifest themselves as economic shocks that affect the rate of growth of the economy, the pace of job creation and the increase in wages and inflation. There are two types of eonomic shocks: demand and supply."[E-5]
Demand shocks occur when there is a sudden change in consumer behavior or preferences. This could happen because of a recession, a change in government policy, or a sudden increase in the availability of credit. When the demand for a good or service rapidly increases, its price typically increases because suppliers cannot adequately respond to the increased demand. A decrease in demand has the opposite effect. For example, lithium is in high demand for electric vehicles; however, lithium is found in only af few locations globally, with production unable to keep up with the growth in demand. That's a demand shock.
Demand shocks are often short-term in nature, and generally do not influence the longer-term economic path or productivity. Supply shocks do. They directly affect the drivers of gowth -- the growth of labour supply and productivity -- and their underlying determinants -- physical capital, human capital and natural capital, technology and the degree of innovation.
A supply shock is an unexpected or sudden change in supply of a product or commodity resulting in an unforeseen change in price. When supply is disrupted, prices tend to rise, because there is less of the good or service to go around. In the short term, this can lead to inflation, as consumers are forced to pay more for the same goods or services. However, in the longer term, supply shocks may lead to lower prices, because producers may adjust their production processes or find new suppliers to meet demand. Supply shocks can be negative, resulting in a decreased supply, or positive, yielding an increased supply. For example, on the supply side, extreme weather events, such as droughts, will likely increase food price volatility.
Carney asks, "With what urgency should we act?" while seeing climate change as a significant economic issue. "Climate change is the ultimate betrayal of intergenerational equity. It imposes costs on future generations that the current generation has no direct incentives to fix. ... climate change is an issue that i) involves the entire world, from which no one will be able to self-isolate, ii) is predicted by science to be the central risk of tomorrow, and iii) we can address only if we can act in advance and in solidarity." [E-5]
Solutions to climate change via new technology will be a challenge. Historically, technology adoption follows a relatively predictable life cycle known as the technology S-curve. Typcally, reaching the second phase of mass adoption takes forty-five years. which for climate change, would be far too slow to remain within carbon budgets for GHG reduction.
There has been no general public realization that the growth edict ingrained in capitatism has been a primary contributor to the climate crisis. So, if a major contributor is not generally recognized as a fault in a centuries old system, capitalism won't be fixed any time soon. That's an urgency without a obvious fix.
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Rebecca Henderson, a Harvard Business School professor, is now optimistic about solving this capitalism dilemna. She once came to believe that our singular focus on profit at any price was putting the future of our planet and everyone on it at risk. However, addressing questions like, "Can I really make money while doing the right thing?" and "Would it make a difference in the end if I could?", have given her hope in laying out a roadmap for practical and essential change.
With twenty years working with firms trying to transform themselves, Henderson learned that, "The firms that mastered change were those that had a reason to do do so: the ones that had a purpose greater than simply
maximizing profits. People who believe that their work has a meaning beyond themselves can accomplish amazing things, and we have the opportunity to mobilize shared purpose at a global scale.'
'The world is on fire. The burning of fossil fuels—the driving force of modern industrialization—is killing
hundreds of thousands of people, while simultaneously destabilizing the earth's climate, acidifying the oceans,and raising sea levels.[E-7] Much of the world's topsoil is degraded, and demand for fresh water is outstripping supply.[E-8] Left unchecked, climate change will substantially reduce GDP, flood the great coastal cities, and force millions of people to migrate in search of food.[E-9] Insect populations are crashing and no one knows why—or what the consequences will be.[E-10] We are running the risk of destroying the viability of the natural systems on which we all depend.[E-11]'
'Wealth is rushing to the top. The fifty richest people among them own more than the poorer half of humanity, while more than six billion live on less than $16 a day.[E-12] Billions of people lack access to adequate education, health care, and the chance for a decent job, while advances in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) threaten to throw millions out of work.[E-13] '
'The institutions that have historically held the market in balance—families, local communities, the great faith traditions, government, and even our shared sense of ourselves as a human community—are crumbling or even vilified. In many countries the increasing belief that there is no guarantee that one's children will be better off than oneself has helped to fuel violent waves of anti- minority and anti-immigrant sentiment that threaten to destabilize governments across the world. Institutions everywhere are under pressure. A new generation of authoritarian populists is taking advantage of a toxic mix of rage and alienation to consolidate power.[E-14]'
'You may wonder what these problems have to do with capitalism. ... And, even if you think business should plan an active role in attempting to solve these problems, doesn't it seem, at first glance, an unlikely idea? In the majority of our boardrooms and our MBA classrooms, the first mission of the firm is to maximize profits. This is regarded as self-evidently true. Many managers ... view issues such as climate change, inequality, and institutional collapse as "externalties," best left to governments and civil society. As a result, we have created a system in which many of the world's companies believe that it is their moral duty to do nothing for the public good.' Many of our problems are caused by a deeply held belief that a firm's only duty is to maximize "shareholder value.'
'But this mind-set is changing ... Thousands of firms have committed themselves to a purpose larger than profitability.[E-15]'
Henderson shares accounts of many effective purpose-driven organizations which she describes as sharing two elements. The first is a clear sense of their mission in the world. Making money is not the primary goal of leaders of purpose-driven firms, as much as they recognize that they must generate profits to survive. Some purpose-driven firms exist to improve the lives of their customers. Some focus on creating employment. Others hope to solve the world's environmental and social problems. But in every case they put mission over the need to maximize short-term share-holder returns. The second element is a commitment to building an organization in which every employee is treated with dignity and respect and viewed as a whole human being whose autonomy and worth is to be honored. In these "high road" or "high commitment" organizations, authority is broadly delegated and work is designed to empower people on the front line to make decisions and improve performance. People are routinely challenged and given opportunities for personal growth. High commitment organizations pay well, but rely more on intrinsic motivation than on the use of monetary rewards or the threat of termination. Hierarchy is downplayed in favor of the development of trust and mutual respect between superiors and employees. It is the combination of mission and this change in the nature of work that releases the creativity, commitment, and raw energy that enables purpose-driven firms to survive in a ruthlessly competitive world—and that drives the innovation that is required to reimagine capitalism.
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Purpose-Driven and Purposely Managed
Leaders who embrace a mission, without adjusting their management to suit, often struggle to implement the mission. Those who simply raise wages without changing the nature of work and the purpose of the organization struggle to afford the pay raise. In short, the creation of authentically purpose-driven, high road organizations is an important step toward a just society.
If managing with purpose works and is such a powerful source of competitive advantage, then why doesn't everyone manage this way? Why have so many firms been so slow to put these ideas into action? Gallop reports that 34 percent of US workers are now "actively engaged"—the highest number in Gallop's history—and that the percentage who are "actively disengaged" has fallen to 13 percent, a new low. But more than half of all employees remain "unengaged"—generally satisfied but not cognitively or emotionally connected to their work or workplace. They show up and do the minimum that is required but are likely to leave if they receive a slightly better financial offer." The reason purpose-driven management is not universal or at least more common is because it is in itself an architectural innovation of the first order—requiring managers to think about themselves, their employees, and the structure of the firm in entirely new ways. And unfortunately, many managers are prisoners of a worldview—and with it a view of employees and a method of management—that is over a hundred years old. To reimagine capitalism, Henderson helps us to understand just where this worldview came from—and how it can be changed.
Living green and effectively addressing climage change will not only take this attitudinal change to hearts and minds to be purpose-driven, but must be collaborative in actions supporting the purpose. In simple terms we must care and be careful. Although this may appear outside of economics, remember that economics relates to how people chose to use resources; i.e., how we care for Earth's resources.
Henderson's book describes corporate cultures which are typical of historical America. She also describes corporations which have changed the status quo. I won't play one against another by name. You can read her book for their identities in context; however, here is some insight into their contrasting cultures:
"Performance at [Firm "Able"] was judged on the basis of well-defined rules or easily observable metrics, such as whether individuals met prespecified deadlines, while performance at [Firm "Congruent"] was judged on the basis of the performance of the team as a whole. At [Congruent], goals were jointly determined through lively communication across multiple levels of the organization, an idea completely foreign to the top-down, command-and-control manner in which [Able] was run. Managers whose entire careers had been spent focusing on the current quarter, making their numbers, and learning to fine-tune an existing system were ill-equipped to rethink the fundamentals of employee management. People who had always managed their suppliers and their blue-collar workers by bullying them had a difficult time thinking of them as a source of continuous improvement and treating them with trust and respect. Most critically, the successful adoption of high-performance work practices requires the ability to create deep levels of trust, and [Able's] history meant that it had horrible problems doing this. [Able] preferred to manage by the numbers and to promote on the basis of quantitative results. But no set of numerical objectives can specify the kinds of behaviors that characterize high-performance fims. Senior management would announce a commitment to Iong-term relationships and to building trust, but until and unless these announcements were coupled with similar commitments and altered incentives at the local level, few believed that the local managers whom they dealt with would, in fact, change their behavior."[E-16]
Henderson believes that business leaders must be aware of the need to make both profits and meaning if we are to solve the great problems of our time. Yet, even if meaning is created, communicated and incorporated deeply within the organization, investors must be able to get past the focus on short-term monetary results and see the long-term value of purpose and meaning driving the firm. Henderson shares the issues involved in this transformation of investor insight with work that has and is being done to enable investors to see social value in their investments. An infrastructure change with long term benefits may then be seen as a reason to sacrifice short-term profits for the long-term.
Circular Economy
A circular economy is about using valuable resources wisely, thinking about waste as a resource instead of a cost. A circular economy seeks to avoid waste. It retains and recovers as much value as possible from resources by reusing, repairing, refurbishing, remanufacturing, repurposing, or recycling products and materials. The circular nature comes from taking waste back to the front end of the process to use waste as an input in production, lessening the need for resource extraction to provide that input.
Engendering a Public Conscience
Although a lot of people, almost 8 billion of us globally, can individually do a lot to help preserve Earth as a suitable human habitat, it seems we cannot individually do enough in time. A Nordic report, Improving Nordic Policymaking by Dispelling Myths on Sustainable Consumption [E-19], details changes that can be made by policymakers to engender broader and significant actions by and beyond individuals including corporate and government.
The report states, "It is unrealistic to expect a sustainable society to materialise from current political strategies on sustainable consumption. The changes needed are significant, and the research explored in this study shows that policy makers have a plethora of opportunities to create positive change using strategies and tools synergistically.'
'Our society is consumptogenic: the structures of society promote consumption patterns that Nordic people think of as normal, but which are unsustainable. On the other hand, citizens who attempt to make significant lifestyle changes for sustainability face insurmountable socio-cultural barriers to sustainable practices. This highlights the need for governments to lead the shift to cultures of sustainability.' They can ... 'lead the shift to sustainability by creating the societal structures that make sustainable living the default option. Inno- vation in technology and infrastructure, regulation, pricing, marketing and new social norms can be used in combination to create sustainable choice architecture." [E-17]
This Nordic report goes on to say, "Regulations are often the most effective policy tools for changing consumption patterns. ... Regulations are often more effective when used in combination with other policy instruments, e.g. economic and information tools in policy packages.'
'Building positive social norms is essential for embedding sustainable practices in everyday life and for increasing public acceptability for stronger consumption policies. Even coercive, proscriptive policies that require significant lifestyle changes (e.g. switching from private car use to public transport) can gain higher public acceptance by using appropriate framing techniques, reinforcing pro-societal and pro-environmental social norms, and by providing safe, comfortable and cheap sustainable alternatives to unsustainable behaviours.'
'A policy focus is needed on facilitating change away from high-impact consumption areas (e.g. flying, consumption of meat and dairy products and
car driving) to lower-impact consumption areas (e.g. vegetarian diets, public mobility, local leisure and cultural activities, and personal development).' 'Understanding and supporting the drive of humans to become happier and healthier, ... It may be useful to communicate a wider vision of well-being, which includes pro-societal values such as resilient [E-18]
resilient communities, equitable, fair and sustainable resource use, health, education and personal development, peace and stability, environmental and social justice and other macro-issues that indirectly influence individuals and families.'
'... despite the long history of consumption studies, and perhaps due to the complexity of the subject itself, there are many misconceptions, simplifications and genera-lisations about consumer behaviour that have penetrated the discourse on sustainable consumption in society at large and especially in policy circles."
The report explores a number of "myths" pertaining to consumption and sustainability. Myth 1 is: Green consumption is the solution. The myth propagates the idea that producing and selling green (eco-, organic, fair trade, etc.) products will lead to significant environmental improvements that are able to offset and surpass the impacts associated with our high and increasing consumption levels. Although technological improvements no doubt have great potential to reduce the environmental impacts of current lifestyles, their contribution to sustainable consumption still has limits. Despite the impressive results in process and product efficiency and the increasing share of eco-labelled products on the market, the aggregate levels of emissions from product consumption are increasing, the amount of products per household and per person is growing and the overall size and speed of resource and waste flows in society are mounting.
The fuel efficiency from cars has improved over the recent decades, while the savings have been offset by
an increase in the amount of travel by car (EEA 2012). Fuel efficient cars have enabled people to drive longer distances for the same amount of money. What little greenhouse gas reduction might have occurred, is far insufficient to reach needed CO2 reduction. Similar feeble trends can be seen in energy used for heating. Potential and real savings are often offset with more vacation flights, or larger homes.
The green virtue of organic foods seems pointless when the price of organic food is significantly greater than non-organic. One reason for this is still the low availability of organic food in shops, the other being the so-called “attitude-behaviour” gap between the expressed preferences for green products and the actual consumer purchasing behaviour.
Both governmental and business support is needed for the growing community of individuals, municipalities and cities that enable more sustainable ways of living through social innovation, e.g. low-carbon communities and collaborative consumption and sharing.
Polititians can discuss and promote a much greater diversity of paths to well-being by framing policies and actions as promoting sustainable lifestyles and well-being that could de-dramatise the focus on levels of material consumption and move the societal debate in a more proactive and productive course on how people’s quality of life can be improved.
EXTERNALTIES
There are costs to the environment that are often understated, unrecognized, or simply unknown, making human impact on the environment difficult to assess numerically in a monetary sense. We may in fact gloss overcertain irrecoverable harms we do because of the difficulty of measuring these harms.
In economics, externalties occur when producing or consuming a good causes an impact on third parties not directly related to the transaction. There are positive and negative externalties.
Next: go to Economics 101
Footnotes
[E-1] Czeck, Brian: Supply Shock, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC, 2013 – p,44
[E-2] Jahren, Hope: The Story of More, Vintage Canada, Penguin Random House, New York, 2020
[E-3] Milanovic, Branko: The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality. United States, Basic Books, 2010.
[E-4] Smith, Richard: Green Capitalism: The God that Failed. WEA and College Publications, 2016
[E-5] Carney, Mark: Value(s): Building a Better World for All. Penguin Random House Canada Limited. 2021
[E-6] Smith, Richard (2018) p.49
[E-7] WHO (World Health Organization), "Health Benefits Far Outweigh the Costs of Meeting Climate Change Goals" wwwwho.int/news-room/detail/05-12-2018-health-benefits-far-outweigh-the-costs-of-meeting-climate-change-goals; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2014: Impacts. Adaptation, and Vulnerability Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by C B. Field, V. R Barros, D J. Dokken, K. J. Mach, M. D. Mastrandrea, T. E. Bilir, M. Chatterjee, K. L Ebi, Y. O. Estrada, R. C Genova, B. Girma, E. S. Kl.ssel, A. N. Lev,, S MacCracken, P. R. Mastrandrea, and L L. White (Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press. 2014).
[E-8] IPCC, Climate Change 2014, WWAP (UNESCO World Water Assessment Programme), The United Nations World Water Development Report 2019: Leaving NO One Behind (Paris: UNESCO, 2019), www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/press-release/halfworld-face-severe-water- stress-2030-unless-water-use-decoupled.
[E-9] K. K. Rigaud, A. de Sherbinin, B. Jones, J. Bergmann, V. Clement, K. Ober, J. Schewe, S. Adamo, B. McCusker, S. Heuser, and A. Midgley, Groundswell: Preparing for Internal Climate Migration (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018).
[E-10] Jarvis, Brooke, "The Insect Apocalypse Is Here," New York Times, Nov. 27, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/insect-apocalypse.html.
[E-11] S. Diaz, J. Setlele, E. S. Brondizio. H. T. Ngo, M. Guéze. J. Agard, A. Arneth, et al., eds., "Summary for Policymakers of the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services" (Bonn. Germany: IPBES Secretariat, 2019).
[E-12] Hans Rosling. Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Ronnlund. Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong Aboul the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, 1st ed. (New York, Flatiron Books. 2018).
[E-13] WHO "World Bank and WHO: Half the World Lacks Access to Essential Health Services, 100 Million Still Pushed into Extreme Poverty Because of Health Expenses," Dec. 13, 2017, www.who.int/news-room/detail/13-12-2017-world- -bank-and-who-half-the-world-lacks0access-to-essential-health-services-100-million-still pushed-into-extreme-poverty-because-of-health-expenses; Kate Hodal, "Hundreds of Millions of Children in School but Not Learning." Guardian, Feb. 2, 2018, www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/feb/02/hundreds-of-millions-of-children-in-school-but-not-Iearning-world-bank; United Nations, "Lack of Quality Opportunities Stalling Young People's Quest for Decent Work—UN Report / UN News." Nov. 21, 2017, https://news.un.org/en/story/2017/11/636812-lack-quality- opportunities-stalling-young-peoples-quest-decent-workun-report; James Manyika et al.. "Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained; Workforce Transitions in a Time of Automation." McKinsey Global Institute (2017).
[E-14] Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die, 1st ed. (New York: Crown Publishing. 2018): Yascha Mounk. The people B. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018).
[E-15] Henderson, Rebecca. Reimagining Capitalism in a World On Fire. New York: PublicAffairs, 2020.
[E-16] [Ibid] p.109
[E-17] Oksana Mont, Eva Heiskanen, Kate Power and Helka Kuusi. Improving Nordic policymaking by dispelling myths on sustainable consumption. Nordic Council of Ministers, 2013 -- p.12
[E-18] [Ibid] Resilience is a long-term capacity of systems to withstand change and to be able to further develop.
[E-19] Sustainable consumption was defined at the Oslo Roundtable (1994) as: ‘the use of goods and services that
respond to basic needs and bring a better quality of life, while minimizing the use of natural resources, toxic materials and emissions of waste and pollutants over the life cycle, so as not to jeopardize the needs of future generations’.
Oslo Roundtable (1994), ‘Part 1 – The imperative of sustainable production and consumption’, available at
https://enb.iisd.org/consume/oslo004.html (accessed 15 February 2023).